Medicalising Adolescence

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the population is controlled by a drug called Soma, the perfect pleasure drug that provides a mindless, inauthentic happiness, which fools people into being content with their lack of freedom. The premise is that when everyone tells themselves they are happy, the government can achieve control. It does this by using the drug to eliminate painful emotions so that deep feeling is eliminated. Yet, what makes us human and unique is our ability to feel.

Our feelings drive us to fulfil a belief or a dream, to grow, to learn and to love. Our feelings are personal and intimate. They influence how we engage with self, other and society. The government in Brave New World discourages these intense human emotions. Since no one in Brave New World can create or express emotions, individual expression becomes non-existent and conformity becomes the norm.

So, when I hear that more than 70,000 children, including nearly 2,000 of primary-school age, were prescribed antidepressants in England last year, I feel outrage and concern because I see striking similarities to Soma. At a time when we should be helping our young people to confront, understand and express their feelings in ways which are safe – when we should be facilitating them to learn healthy ways to process grief, loss, anxiety, stress and sadness, (emotions which will come up all through life and therefore need to be mastered), we act as though the pain of adolescence is something to be cured.

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness

I’m thankful that we were not medicated in these ways when I was a wayward teenager. I’m working on the conflict between being glad of my self-expression and sad that not everyone has this freedom.

The Wednesday Whisper

When do you suppress self-expression in favour of conformity?

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2 Comments

You raise some interesting points. I spoke to a young person on a training I was running and he did not know what the phrase ‘having a heart to heart’ meant. He had never heard it. The way we use digital communication discourages young people from fully expressing their feelings and needs. Reducing vocabulary to a set of cartoon emoticons does not provide the deep release and growth we all need from time to time. Emoticons encourage us to experience our feelings as a ‘hit’ and something to be switched on and off whereas in reality our feelings are in rhythm with nature – night does not turn into day at the flick of a switch and spring does not turn into summer overnight. Thanks Minna

Minna Bruce

Posted 8 months ago

I think it’s terrifying as well as very sad.
The amount of children/young adults who have depression or periods of low days is overwhelming but the worrying thing is that I find they tend to see it as something that someone else should sort out for them.. and expect it to be sorted at the flick of a switch.
Yesterday I found myself wondering what we did when we were unhappy and it became a continuing low mood.. and I think we were saved by our old fashioned means of communication.
I think the main thing is that it’s easier nowadays for the young to feel isolated because of the way they communicate.. it tends to be either face to face in a group or when one on one it’s by messaging. The days of sitting face to face with ONE person seem to have gone.. AND the days of having a long heart to heart TALKING on the phone have gone.
Boys of course have probably always done less of the phone chat anyway, and maybe have tended to do less on a one to one too, which has maybe made them more vulnerable to isolation.
I don’t mean to be waffling here but my thoughts are progressing as I write.
That’s what is so good about Maria’s blogs.. they stimulate thought!!!
I think what it’s beginning to boil down to is that the ‘BEST FRIEND’ scenario of yesteryear has gone.. and your don’t share from the heart in a group..
So when do you share/ bare your soul?

If we don’t share our feelings we can’t process them so easily.
Hence the need for everyone to have therapists these days??
I’ve always said my best friends are my best therapists.. but then I have been lucky with my friends.

Perhaps we as a society need to take a long hard look at what ‘friendship’ is and what is can do..
How to be a good friend as well as having a good friend.